Into the Dark
by Johnny B. Johnson
Summary: A missing student at Sunnydale High prompts Buffy and the Scoobies to investigate. When the teen's disappearance is linked to town-wide blackouts - and the body count rises - the gang finds themselves in a nightmare they might not escape ...
1. Prologue

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: INTO THE DARK

An original story based on the hit television series created by Joss Whedon

by Johnny B. Johnson

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to, nor am I affiliated with anyone involved in, _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. This is an original story based on the characters created by Joss Whedon.

NOTE: "Into the Dark" takes place during Season 2.

PROLOGUE

Katie sighed as she lay in the dark. A breeze blew in through her open bed room window, and she closed her eyes, trying to will sleep to come. It didn't. It had just been such a _long_ day. First Mr. Winters had surprised every one in English class with a pop quiz over the assigned reading, and of course she hadn't read it. Then that reject Xander Harris had attempted - yet again - to ask her out. You would think after getting turned down time and again, he would learn and just move on. Maybe ask out that nerdy Willow girl. Yeah, that would be absolutely perfect. The two were made for each other. Mr. and Mrs. Loser. She had overheard the two of them talking one day when she had made one of her infrequent trips to the library. She had been in the stacks, when Xander and Willow had walked in, followed by the semi-hot librarian and a girl named Buffy Summers. Cordelia had told her before that Buffy was a weirdo, but she had ignored it. Cordelia had a way of making up mean stories about people she didn't like, and unfortunately Buffy had made that list. At least she had thought that they were only stories. Until she heard what the group began to discuss.

"The vamps are laying it on heavy this week, Giles." This was Buffy talking, a mile a minute. "I'm not kidding. It's been vampire overload the past couple of nights."

"Do you think they're up to something?" Xander this time. "Maybe scheduling a town-wide suck-a-pa-looza? You know how much we love _those_ in good old Sunnydale!"

"Does Angel know anything?," Willow asked quietly. She seemed almost afraid to speak up and interrupt her friends.

Katie snuck quietly out of the back entrance, leaving the group to discuss their fairy tales. Vampires? In Sunnydale? Cordelia might've been right. Buffy and her friends _were_ freaks.

Her bedroom lights suddenly flickered to life before dimming again. Katie sat up in bed, forgetting all about her English test and Xander Harris. "That was strange," she thought. Although strange did seem to be the norm in Sunnydale, CA. Other people might ignore everything that went on, but she didn't. She wasn't blind and she definitely wasn't stupid. She wasn't quite sure how to explain everything: the disappearances, the strange sounds at night, the weird things going on - like her lights, which continued to flicker on and off now. No, she didn't know what was happening in the small town of Sunnydale. She only knew that people ignored it. "Maybe it's the vampires," she said half-jokingly to herself. She laughed at her little joke. "Maybe I should call Xander to come save me." Again, she laughed.

A surge of energy, so strong you could hear it - it was a high-pitched squeal - radiated through the room. The lights were brighter than ever. Suddenly, they burst and the room was thrown into total darkness.

Katie looked around her room, her eyes slowly adjusting to the sudden darkness. She was alone. At least she thought she was alone. When the lights blazed, she was the only occupant. Now she was beginning to have doubts. A presence was there, she could feel it. Someone else was in the room with her. Or some_thing_. "Stop it, Katie," she said to herself angrily. "Just stop." But the image of the infamous Sunnydale Vamps wouldn't leave her mind.

She got up and crosses over to the window. Everything looked calm. She was pleased to note that _all _of the lights on the block were out. "Just a power outage," she said, almost relieved. The boogeyman might exist in Sunnydale, but she was certain he wasn't coming for her tonight.

She turned around, preparing to head back to bed - and stopped dead in her tracks. The cross above her bed ... it was hanging upside down. Katie was not a religious person. In fact, she would have taken the cross down from her wall, had her mother not insisted it stay put. Still, the sacrilegious image was enough to send icy chills down her spine. She crept closer to her bed, her eyes fixed on the cross.

The room felt colder now, much colder. "It's just me," she thought. "I'm scaring myself." But, no, this wasn't in her head. She could see her breath as she exhaled, forming in front of her in icy puffs. As she stood staring at the wall, the temperature must've dropped nearly thirty degrees! Her teeth chattered as she lifted her leg to climb into bed.

Someone else was in the room now. The feeling she had earlier only intensified, propelled by the sound of heavy, dry breathing. "It's still only me. It's _my_ breathing I hear." But it wasn't. It was a wheezing sort of sound, as if the person doing it was having an asthma attack. The wheezing sound was followed shortly by the smallest, eeriest of giggles.

"Hello?" Katie felt like a walking cliché. Calling out to whatever was in her room seemed to come out straight out of a horror movie. She herself hated to watch movies like that, not because she was afraid of them, but because the heroines almost always made the same mistake she was making now. _Leave_, she thought. _Get out of the room. Wake up mom and dad, call the police, go for a coffee - anything! Just get the hell out of this room!_ "Is anyone there?," she heard herself ask shakily.

"Yes," a cruel voice whispered back, breaking through the darkness.

Katie moved towards the bedroom door crookedly - she couldn't believe her fear had paralyzed her like this. It was hard to move. In fact, almost impossible. It was as if her right foot was pinned to the floor. She looked down - and saw that her foot was entirely capable of moving. It was just held in place by a decaying, decrepit hand sticking out from under her bed.

As she opened her mouth to scream, she was jerked to the floor. In almost slow motion, Katie was pulled under the bed. The last sound she heard was raspy wheezing, followed by a near silent giggle. As Katie disappeared into nowhere, the lights in Sunnydale came back to life.


	2. Part 1

PART ONE

Buffy Summers squinted in the early morning sunlight. It was going to be a rough day, she could tell already. No one in their right mind would be up this early. Or maybe the correct phrasing was be up this late. Buffy hadn't slept in hours. What had started as a quick night of patrolling for vampires had turned into a wild goose chase. "I almost had him," she thought to herself as she climbed through her bedroom window. "But that damn black out ..."

The night had almost been uneventful, until a lawyer - or what used to be a lawyer - named Chuck Wilson had risen. A quick tumble in the dirt should have been enough. But Ol' Chuck was a little lighter on his feet than Buffy had anticipated, and definitely much stronger than she had guessed. Had he been alive, she would've taken him down instantly. But as a vampire, Chuck Wilson was quite a force to be reckoned with. After a quick chase through the cemetery, he leapt over the graveyard wall and fled into Sunnydale.

"Great," she thought. "A game of tag."

With a single leap, she cleared the wall and fled after Chuck, who was also, it appeared, a sprinter. After losing him once, she finally cornered him outside the Bronze, delivering a swift roundhouse kick to his skull. Chuck went flailing into the Bronze door, which was thankfully closed and bolted shut - the club had closed hours earlier. Mr. Pointy was raised and ready to go - until the streetlights, and every other light in town, decided to extinguish. Buffy found herself thrown into complete darkness. Chuck, however, had perfect night vision. After giving Buffy a fast kick in the ribs, he fled. When her eyes finally readjusted to the darkness, Chuck was long gone. She searched for hours, but he was no where to be found.

And that pissed Buffy off royally. She scolded herself on not staking him quicker while she took a shower, and re-examined her approach on Chuck as she dressed for school. "Oh, well," she thought as she walked out the front door, looking like the average teenage girl that she wasn't. "I'll get him later." She wasn't accustomed to losing, especially to a blood sucker. "We'll call it a tie for now," she said, enjoying the thought of beating Chuck to a bloody pulp. "Later, Buffy. Save it for later," she thought, and headed in the direction of Sunnydale High.

"French fry?," Xander Harris asked Willow Rosenberg as they sat patiently in the Sunnydale High library, waiting for Buffy to arrive. He popped the cold fast food into his mouth, relishing the taste of day old grease. "They're reeeeeal good ..."

"For breakfast?" Willow sneered at the stale looking fry and took a timid bite from an apple.

"Yes, for breakfast. There's no better time to clog your arteries than in the morning." Xander gobbled down a handful, licking the salt and grease from his fingertips. "I'm sure the Buffster would agree with me."

"Agree with you about what?" Buffy walked into the library and took a seat at the table in the center of the room. She yawned and laid her head down, wishing that Tuesday morning didn't come so early.

"What's wrong?," Xander asked, a hint of emotion creeping into voice. Ever since Buffy had moved to Sunnydale from L.A., he had held a secret passion for her. He stuttered for a moment, and then recovered. "I mean ... did our little super hero have a late night?" In a last act of recovery, he shoved a handful of french fries into his mouth.

"You've no idea. Lawyer vamp gave me a run for my money."

"But, you got him, right?," Willow prodded sweetly, always looking for a bright side.

"No." The irritation in Buffy's voice was evident to all. "I almost had him, but then there was, like, a massive blackout. He got away."

"A blackout? You mean, like, lights out everywhere? And you were by yourself?" The concern in Xander's voice rang even more so than Buffy's irritation. "Look, Buff, I know that you're, like, Super Woman or whatever, but you really shouldn't go out patrolling alone. You should let us come along."

"So I can worry about you guys the whole time? No way."

"But we're your Scooby gang," Willow said mildly. "You could let us help out a bit. I mean ... I can be tough. I'm mean." The innocence in Willow's voice melted Buffy. _What would I do without you guys?_, she thought to herself.

"She has a point, you know," Xander said, silently hoping that Buffy would give in. Some alone time with her was just what he needed. He could see it now. He and Buffy alone in a dark alley; a fanged mutant attacks from behind and almost annihilates Buffy ... until Xander Harris comes to the rescue! She would be eating out of his hands. "We've both fought our share of baddies since we joined the Buffy Summers fan club."

Buffy sighed, following it with a yawn. "Guys, I don't -" She stopped mid-sentence as Giles hurried into the room. An air of business followed him and Buffy was suddenly alert, the business of whether or not to allow patrolling companionship hidden far away at back of her mind.

"Do any of you know a student named Katie Johnson?," Giles asked, walking over to the counter and pouring himself a ready-made cup of tea. He stirred sugar in to it as he stared the three teens down, waiting for a reply. He didn't have to wait long.

"You mean Katie 'Oh-my-God-she's-gorgeous' Johnson?," Xander said, his stale french fries left behind for the time being. "Yeah, who _doesn't _think of her while they're in the shower?"

"Gross much," Buffy said, as Willow tried her hardest to block the ever arousing thought of Xander in the shower. "What about her?," Buffy asked, moving on as quickly as possible before Xander could toss in another shower image.

"Her parents have reported her missing." Giles took a quick sip of his tea, letting the statement sink in for a moment.

"When did they report it?," Buffy inquired, her spidey sense coming to life. A _regular_ missing person in Sunnydale? It could happen - when pigs fly. Buffy hated to think it, but odds are if she _was_ missing, she was already vamp meat.

"Early this morning, a bit after the blackout."

Buffy winced at the word 'blackout'. She was still sore about missing the chance to do in Old Chuck the Lawyer. _Not now, Buffy_, she thought. "How do they know that she's missing?"

"They heard her scream when the lights went out."

Uh-oh. Screaming. Not a good sign. Miss Johnson's future was looking very dim, at least the way that Buffy was seeing it.

"So, what are we thinking?," Xander asked. "Vampires?"

"I doubt Katie would've invited anyone in at night, especially during a black out," Willow said, a grim look stretched across her face. "Which means -"

"Something else," Buffy finished for her. She sighed. _Looks like another job for the Chosen One_, she thought. From the first day she had moved to Sunnydale, she had seen, heard and fought things found only in your worst nightmares. She was betting that whatever _did_ get Katie, it wasn't pretty. What worried her the most was that - whatever kind of baddie it was - it might strike again before she could get to it. "Okay," Buffy said, getting up and collecting her things. "Let's jump on this. Willow, I need you on cyber patrol."

"Yes," Giles said, taking a seat at the table as the teens prepared to leave. "Although I'm not sure exactly what we're looking for. As for the young Miss Johnson, keep your eyes peeled. Unless her body turns up, we'll assume that she is still alive and in need of our assistance."

Buffy sighed and walked out of the library, a new weight now lumbering on her shoulders. "First escaping vampires, now this? Jesus, it gets better and better." Willow followed timidly, and Xander brought up the rear, leaving Giles alone. He watched them go, smiled to himself, and then took another sip of his tea, settling in for what he was sure would be a long day.

Cordelia Chase stared at her body in the mirror before gym class, trying to prolong leaving the locker room as long as she could. She detested the hour long period of mandatory physical activity, but relished in examining her body before and after the session.

"Cordelia, let's move it!," Coach Thompson called from somewhere out in the hallway.

She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Give me just a minute, please!," she yelled back. _The nerve_, she thought. She reached inside her locker, looking for the body spray that she had stashed. Suddenly, the lights began to dim before coming back to life. She looked around cautiously, then continued to dig.

"Miss Chase! Now!," called the Coach.

"Fine," Cordelia said out loud. She slammed her locker shut and proceeded to the exit. The lights flickered and then shut off completely. Cordelia stopped in her tracks. For a moment, fear gripped her and she could not move.

This wasn't the first time that she had found herself in a situation like this. She found herself being thrown into terrifying situations quite often now - against her will, by the way. _Just calmly go out to the gym_, she thought. She began walking again, but was stopped by the sound of ... what was it? Creaking? Yes, that was it. A door was creaking open. She moved faster.

As she turned a corner of lockers, she saw that the janitor's closet was the source of the noise. It was open just enough to see that there was not an ounce of light coming from the inside. What had opened it? _Probably just a broom. Yes, that's it. A broom fell over and pushed the door open_. Her explanation was satisfying enough.

As she attempted to walk past the open door, it swung open even further. Cordelia moved out of the way, just missing the heap of flesh that fell to the floor. She stared for a moment, taking in what she was seeing. The mangled corpse of Katie Johnson lay on the locker room floor, an expression of total and complete terror molded onto it's face. Cordelia shrieked. Somewhere in the locker room, a light, raspy giggle echoed.


End file.
